


015 "trans-dimensional"

by wheel_pen



Series: Iron Man AU [15]
Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: And now you know why, F/M, Fish out of Water, My Pepper is different, Post-Iron Man, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 22:32:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/753835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Tony unexpectedly regains consciousness while Pepper is rescuing him from an Iron Man mission gone awry, she decides she must confess her big secret to him—that she's actually a trans-dimensional being sent to Earth in a human-like shell, charged with using her superpowers to protect and assist him. He takes it better than he might have pre-Iron Man, fortunately. "In my dreams, you call me Tony."</p>
            </blockquote>





	015 "trans-dimensional"

**Author's Note:**

> 1) My Pepper is very different from canon Pepper. Her personality/origin is very different; to separate her from canon Pepper I've given her a new last name and a different hair color. **This is the one where we find out why Pepper is different. Maybe all the other stories will make more sense now.
> 
> 2) The bad words are censored. That's just how I do things.
> 
> 3) Stories are numbered in the order I wrote them, which isn't necessarily the order in which they occur. At some point I'll post a timeline.
> 
> I wrote this series after the first Iron Man movie came out. It's very AU but I hope you'll enjoy it anyway. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play with these characters.

            So far all of these stories have dealt with Before. I wanted you to understand what things were like—how I got along with people, especially Pepper.

            This one is about After.

            The first thing I was aware of was that I felt like s—t. Next, the bone-rattling vibrations. Then, the general sensation of enclosure, of pressure all around my body. That meant I was in the suit, flying. And that also meant I had better open my eyes right away and figure out what the h—l was going on.

            The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was Pepper. Pepper. Through the visor. Outside the suit. Which was cruising at a very high altitude at a very fast speed. So this didn't make any sense at all.

            "P-Pepper? What the h—l?" My voice croaked a little; did I mention I felt like s—t? She turned her head quickly at the sound of my voice, surprised that I was awake. I guessed she was holding onto the suit somehow, but as cold as she had to be, and with the air so thin—"Jarvis! Take us down, now! Pepper, you have—"

            "It's alright, Mr. Stark," she assured me, looking ridiculously calm and composed in her business suit, flying through the air. "We need to get you to the hospital. Jarvis, stay on course."

            " _Yes, ma'am_ ," agreed my disloyal b-----d of a computer. Who was in control of this thing, me or Pepper?

            "Jarvis, if you don't take this thing… down… right… now…" It was becoming hard for me to focus as I started to black out (again, I supposed). I shook my head inside the helmet, fighting to stay conscious. Black spots danced before my eyes. When I was able to look outside again—no Pepper.

            Panic swelled within me. "Jarvis, where's—" I turned my head, looking in all directions. Finally I looked down—and there was Pepper, falling through the sky, plummeting downwards, staring back up at me. The last thing I remembered was pointing myself in her direction and firing the rockets.

            I woke up in much more peaceful surroundings, my room in the private hospital that handled my more serious injuries. Yes, I had a room already reserved. And decorated, too, to help me be a more tractable patient during my visits. There were several people hovering over me, saying pointless things like, "He's coming around now," but there was only one person I wanted to see.

            "Pepper," I mumbled, around the dryness in my throat and the general ache in my body. No one was paying enough attention to what I was saying, though, so I batted away the flashlight shining into my eye and demanded more forcefully, "Pepper. Pepper!" She had to be there. Otherwise it meant—

            "I'm right here, sir," she answered, laying a cool hand on my arm.

            Relief surged through me. But also confusion. "What the h—l happened?" I asked, staring blearily at my unruffled assistant.

            "We were hoping you could tell us," said Agent Benson, my contact from SHIELD. He shooed the doctor away and proceeded to grill me about the weapons cache I'd been looking for in northern Japan. I remembered well enough what happened up to a point; then there must have been an explosion big enough to rattle my gourd and send Jarvis into autopilot mode. "Then I woke up here," I finished, looking pointedly at Pepper. She didn't blink, gave no indication she knew I'd left a little bit out.

            "Mm-hmm," Benson muttered, scribbling a note. "So there were _how_ many armed guards again?"

            I had little patience with debriefings anyway (at least in the non-metaphorical sense), and right now I was burning to talk to Pepper. Alone. "Look, Benson, why don't you ask Jarvis for a mission report? I'm kinda beat here."

            The agent pursed his lips unpleasantly. "I don't think Jarvis likes me," he confessed a bit sheepishly. "He's kind of sarcastic whenever I talk to him."

            "He's sarcastic with everyone," I pointed out shortly. "Except for Pepper. He likes her." Again, not a flicker of emotion.

            Benson closed his notebook, fortunately. "Well, I'll go report in," he decided. "I'll be back to check on you later, Tony. Feel better!" Thanks, hadn't thought of that.

            As Benson left Pepper moved to sit on the edge of the bed, pouring me some water and fussing with the straw. "Here, sir, you should try to stay hydrated—"

            I pushed the cup away, even though my throat was dry. "Pepper, what were you _doing_ there? When Jarvis was on autopilot?"

            She looked confused. "Sir?"

            Okay, I knew I hadn't explained it very well, but d----t, she knew what I was talking about. "Pepper. I saw you. I spoke to you. I opened my eyes at what, fifteen thousand feet, and you were _there_." I was starting to get angry now, because I didn't understand what was going on. And I hated not understanding. After all, it didn't happen to me very often.

            And then Pepper looked me straight in the eye and lied to me. "That's impossible, sir. You must have been dreaming."

            Look, I knew my own mind. It wasn't always the easiest place to be, but it didn't usually play tricks on me. On the other hand, I would never have considered that Pepper, of all people, would lie to me. But she did. So this had to be big.

            "I wasn't dreaming, Pepper," I insisted, shifting on the bed as my various injuries made themselves known. I was too stubborn to wait until I felt better to have this conversation. "I saw you. What the h—l is going on?"

            "Sir," Pepper tried, and I could see she wasn't going to come clean, "the doctor says you have a severe concussion. You must have been hallucinating, or dreaming."

            "No," I replied just as firmly. "I know I wasn't dreaming." She raised an eyebrow as if to say, _And how exactly do you know that?_ "In my dreams, you call me Tony." She drew in a breath sharply; that got her. Not as irrefutable logic, certainly, but as the reason _I_ would never believe what she said to the contrary. I had to look away before I added the next part, though. "I saw you fall." It was a haunting, horrible image that I couldn't wipe from my mind—Pepper tumbling into the abyss, staring up at me. "I dropped you."

            "You didn't drop me," Pepper contradicted quietly, and I thought she was going to lie to me again. "I let go."

            My head snapped back up to look at her. "What?"

            "I didn't think you would remember," she confessed baldly as I stared. "I let go so I wouldn't be there if you woke up again. But you turned and caught me. Mr. Stark," she added with a little smile.

            I wasn't smiling back, though. I was too busy processing. And being dumb-founded. "If you had fallen—"

            "If I had fallen, I wouldn't have been hurt."

            I don't know if you've ever had the experience of looking at someone you thought you knew—loved and trusted, for years—and suddenly seeing a stranger in their place, someone you didn't know at all. It had happened to me twice recently and I couldn't recommend it. In both cases there were a few moments when images of the past flashed through my mind, incidents I now saw in their true light or clues I didn't pick up on at the time. With Obadiah I realized how he had kept me distracted, devoid of real responsibility but functional enough to create new designs for him to profit from. With Pepper, though, I thought of all the things that never quite fit—the food, the lack of understanding about people and events, the way she had never been sick or injured, how I'd never caught her asleep or even yawning, a hundred little things that together added up to… something. But I didn't know what.

            "What are you?" I breathed.

            "I'm here to help you, protect you," Pepper tried, but I wasn't buying it. And of course at that moment, the door opened and Rhodey walked in.

            "Hey Tony, how are you—Sorry, am I interrupting something?" Rhodey paused, glancing between the two of us with uncertainty. If even _he_ could sense the tension in the room, it must have been pretty thick.

            "Not at all," Pepper assured him smoothly, sliding off the bed. She grabbed her purse and straightened her skirt. "I was just about to find Mr. Stark a cheeseburger," she explained. Pepper was shockingly adept at lying, though part of me hoped she actually _was_ heading to McDonald's now. One shouldn't toy with an injured man over cheeseburgers. "Can you stay with him a while, Major Rhodes?"

            "I don't need babysitting," I muttered. "I'm already in a hospital." Not one of my favorite places.

            "Sure, no problem," Rhodey agreed affably, approaching the bed as Pepper departed. "Now what was _that_ about?" he questioned after the door had shut behind her.

            "What was what," I sighed without conviction. J---s, people, I had a _severe concussion_ , why did they all want me to give a freakin' soliloquy?

            "Come on, Tony," Rhodey poked, but he was smiling. "You didn't even stare at her a-s as she left! So I _know_ something's wrong." I rolled my eyes at my friend's immaturity. Surely there had been dozens of times when I hadn't stared at Pepper's a-s as she left. _A_ dozen, anyway. "Oh, I know," Rhodey guessed smugly. It seemed unlikely he would guess that I was in the midst of a crisis of personal integrity and trust regarding Pepper's identity and intent for the last few years, but I let him continue anyway. "Pepper just reamed you for being reckless again, didn't she?"

            I felt a small amount of relief, actually, at this idea—I wasn't ready to discuss anything with Rhodey yet, anyway. "Yeah, man, she's brutal," I agreed, shaking my head wearily, which didn't require much acting. "Good thing you came in, I think she was about to pull those shamer's eyes on me."

            "Hey, what are friends for?" Rhodey grinned. "So, how are you doing?"

            I fell asleep not too long into my conversation with Rhodey. I'd had a hard day, after all. The next time I opened my eyes, it was dark out and Pepper was sitting beside the bed, working on her laptop.

            I didn't really know what to think about Pepper anymore. I had known her—lived with her, depended on her—for years. Which really made it all the more ridiculous that I hadn't noticed anything this huge—whatever 'this' was—before now. Well, I'd noticed a lot of little things and a few big ones—the rather shady story of her pre-college years should have been a red flag—but I hadn't ever sat down and pondered what they might _mean_. I thought about myself and my own issues a lot—even now, though the issues were a _little_ more focused on the outside world, it was still what should _I_ do, how should _I_ handle it—and when I _did_ think about Pepper, it wasn't really in a personal context. I mean, well, 'personal' as in lascivious, yes, there was plenty of _that_ in my thoughts; and professional, as in, 'I'll have Pepper do that tomorrow' and 'Pepper will get that for me.' But I rarely, if ever, thought to myself, 'I wonder what Pepper was like as a kid' or 'What would Pepper like to do tonight?' But then again, she was very careful not to reveal much, either, which was really the perfect way to conceal things from me: As long as she didn't appear to have a personal life that inconvenienced what _I_ wanted her to do, it rarely occurred to me to ask her anything personal.

            Great, now I felt not only betrayed, mystified, and freaked out, but also stupid.

            And my head hurt like h—l. I reached up to rub the back of it, futilely, and Pepper glanced up from her work. "How are you feeling, sir?"

            "Like a piece of popcorn in a microwave," I muttered painfully.

            Pepper moved to sit on the edge of the bed and I watched her with a sudden wariness. She reached a hand towards me and I grabbed her arm, careful to only make contact with her sleeve.

            "Don't touch me." I don't know what you are.

            "You'll feel better if I touch you," she pointed out, reaching again.

            I stopped her again, trying to assess her trustworthiness with a stare. Pepper's hands were always cold but her touch was soothing, something I used to gladly accept when I was sick or angry. Another thing I should have questioned farther.

            "Just don't put me to sleep," I finally told her, letting go of her arm. "I know you can do that, too." Or rather, I was just now realizing it.

            She nodded and rested her hand against my forehead. I closed my eyes as the coolness slid down to my cheek, and the throbbing in my head lessened.

            "I told you not to put me to sleep," I said irritably, forcing my heavy eyelids back up.

            "It's not me," Pepper responded evenly. "Your body just needs sleep."

            "What _my_ body needs"—hey, get your mind out of the gutter!—"is a cheeseburger." I looked significantly at the McDonald's bag on the table, then back at Pepper.

            Dutifully she tucked a napkin at the neck of my hospital-wear and unwrapped a delicious, golden, unhealthy cheeseburger. "It's not hot anymore," she warned. "And I already ate the fries."

            "I expected nothing less," I assured her, taking the artery-clogging treat. Apparently one of my arms was injured somehow, as it was tied up in a sling and hurt when I tried to use it. I really wished I had paid more attention to the report the doctor gave about my condition. Fortunately the compact stack of grease slices was easy to eat with one hand.

            "What's wrong with my arm?" I asked Pepper, biting into the cheeseburger. "And where's my milkshake?"

            "It's just sprained," she assured me. "Here."

            She held the straw of a cup up to my mouth so I could take a sip. I wrinkled my nose in disgust as I swallowed the non-dairy mix-based dessert product (which was normally quite tasty). "It's _warm_ ," I accused.

            "Sorry, sir. You _have_ been asleep for a while. And remember what happened when I put it in the freezer for you?"

            My milkshake became a non-dairy mix-based dessert _rock_ , that's what happened. "Fine," I conceded, with ill grace. I chewed silently for a moment. "So what are you, then? One of those mutants they have on the news all the time?"

            Pepper wiped away some ketchup that had smeared on my face. "No, sir."

            "Do _not_ tell me I've had some sort of highly sophisticated android under my nose this whole time." G-d, would _that_ have been embarrassing, considering I was a brilliant _designer_ of robots.

            "No, sir," Pepper assured me.

            I took another slurp of the milkshake she offered. "Are you human?"

            "Not exactly," she confessed.

            This was actually a little bit exciting now, but I tried not to show it. I was still mad at her for deceiving me all this time, d----t. "Are you an alien?"

            "Technically, I'm a trans-dimensional being," Pepper replied calmly.

            "Uh-huh," I nodded, thinking that theoretical physics wasn't really my specialty. Aerodynamics, yes. Rifts in the space-time continuum, or whatever always happened on _Star Trek_ , no. "Sorry, didn't mean to assume."

            "In their natural state, my people are made of pure energy," Pepper explained, holding the milkshake up for me again. "This body is an organic construct that was built to allow me to live on Earth among humans."

            It was such a surreal admission, there was only response that seemed appropriate. "Is there another cheeseburger in that bag?" I asked, pointing. Pepper indicated there was. "Then why isn't it in my hand?"

            Pepper gave me a look and began to wipe my palm with a damp cloth, removing the grease and salt crystals. "You weren't even supposed to have _that_ one," she pointed out. "You know the doctor doesn't like you to have outside food."

            "Well, that's what I have _you_ for, Pepper," I commented, stretching my arm out towards the bag. "To smuggle cheeseburgers in to me during my confinement." I wiggled my fingers, which were still a good two feet shy of the fast food bag.

            "Are you trying to summon it with the Force?" Pepper asked dryly.

            "I am Iron Man," I said in my most serious voice. "And I want a cheeseburger."

            "I don't know why I worried you would act differently after I told you," she muttered—but she gave me the second cheeseburger. No one can resist the Iron Man voice.

            "Well, if you'd told me before I had a miniature power plant embedded in my chest, built a robotic exoskeleton to fly around in, and made some wacky new friends, I might not be taking this so well," I informed her.

            "I suspect the morphine drip has something to do with it as well."

            "You're such a buzzkill, Pepper," I said through a mouthful of cheeseburger.

            It was certainly true that recently my worldview had expanded somewhat—it used to be if I thought something was 'weird,' it was either really kinky or had to do with Pepper (often both). Now I had a number of 'colleagues' with abilities outside the norm, and I myself would forever walk around with a permanent nightlight glowing under my shirt. Still, Pepper as a trans-dimensional being _was_ kind of pushing the envelope.

            Thank G-d for the morphine drip. And the cheeseburgers.

            "I thought maybe you really _were_ autistic," I suggested. "Hey, I dropped a—" Pepper retrieved the pickle slice and put it back on the burger. "Thanks. So how much of that dumb-bunny stuff were you faking, anyway?"

            Pepper frowned at me. "None."

            "Oh." _Awkward!_

            "It's very difficult grasping the social nuances of human behavior." She sounded a little defensive.

            "Well, _sorry_ ," I told her, unsure what the etiquette was in such situations. "I figured you guys were some kind of highly-advanced species, you know—"

            "We don't have _bodies_ ," Pepper reminded me. "That's kind of a fundamental difference right there."

            I conceded that point. "Is there another—"

            "No," Pepper assured me, showing me the empty bag. She wiped off my greasy hand again.

            "How many did _you_ eat?"

            "Five."

            "I'm assuming that's not a normal human body."

            Pepper gave me a look. "Our information about human physiology was incomplete," she began, "and—"

            "Should have done a few more abductions," I quipped. "A few more _probes_."

            She ignored the interruption. "And we wanted this body to have a few extra abilities anyway."

            I looked up immediately. "Extra abilities? Really? What kind of extra abilities? Are you double-jointed? Do you have a ten-inch tongue? Do you have any unusual… parts?" I reached my hand towards her bare knee resting on the bed.

            She took my hand in hers and held it on her lap. "Not quite."

            "Well don't keep me in suspense," I prompted. "What are your superpowers?"

            "Nothing _too_ exciting," Pepper hedged. "Extra strength and speed, um, general invulnerability—hence the falling—"

            "Can you fly?" I interrupted, feeling a little jealous.

            "No."

            " _I_ can fly."

            "Technically, the suit can fly," she corrected me.

            "Flying seems like an easy one to add to the package," I needled. "They couldn't spring for flying?"

            "Apparently not. Shall I continue?"

            "Please."

            "I remember almost everything, I learn languages very quickly, I have a certain amount of telepathic power—"

            "Jedi mind tricks!" I pointed out triumphantly. "Ha, I knew they were real."

            "Yes, sir."

            I frowned. "You don't ever use them on _me_ , do you, Pepper?"

            "No, sir," she answered firmly. "I told you before that I didn't, unless it was an emergency."

            "What about the shamer's eyes?" I asked suspiciously. Now that we were getting things out in the open I wanted a complete inventory.

            "The what?" Pepper asked, looking genuinely confused.

            "You know, when I've done something bad but I'm being an a-s about it, and you give me this look that makes me feel really horrible and repent," I explained gamely.

            Pepper frowned slightly. "No, I don't really have any power like that, sir," she replied slowly.

            "You don't." She shook her head. "Okay then." I would have to think about _that_ one later. I searched my mind for another question to ask and suddenly something became clear. "You don't sleep in anything. Because you don't _sleep_ , right?"

            Pepper gave a little smirk. "Have you thought about that remark often, sir?"

            Pepper, lying naked save for a single satin sheet, downstairs at the end of the hall? "Uh, _yeah_. I guess _that_ dream has died," I added regretfully. "So, like, at night do you go out and stop crime? Patrol San Francisco? Rescue dolphins from fishing nets?"

            "No, sir," she replied. "Why would I do that?"

            "Well, what do you _do_ at night, if you don't sleep?" I persisted, frowning.

            Pepper shrugged. "I read reports. I write memos, I answer email, I schedule events…"

            She trailed off, seeing my expression. "Pepper, are you telling me that you deploy your alien superpowers… to be the world's best secretary?!"

            She gave me a cold look. "I am a personal assistant. To a very _demanding_ billionaire," she began to correct me. "I am a trans-dimensional being, not an alien." I rolled my eyes, as this point seemed very hair-splitting to me. "And I also like to read regular books."

            "Well pardon me," I shot back. " _I'll_ just be the superhero in the family then."

            "I'm not here to be a superhero," she pointed out. "I'm here to look after _you_."

            I blinked at her. "You came all the way from another dimension just to answer my email and get me coffee?" She nodded once. A grin broke across my face. "That's _awesome_ , Pepper. That's an _awesome_ use of your superpowers," I assured her, delighted.

            She smiled a little. "I thought you might approve."

            "Oh, I do, I do." I didn't even bother wondering _why_ I might have merited such special treatment. Why had I _always_ merited special treatment? Well, perhaps 'merited' wasn't the best word—garnered, maybe. Received. Free from the pesky 'why' I basked in the idea of Pepper being an extra-special gift from another dimension. After a moment, though, the glow dimmed. "You said you were here to protect me," I reminded her more soberly. I had a pretty good memory, too, you know.

            "Yes," she agreed, "though it's usually more indirect, speeding healing, making sure you don't pass out in the middle of the road—"

            "Then what about Afghanistan?"

            Having given it considerable thought recently, I didn't regret what happened in Afghanistan. It was three months of h—l, but it turned me from a wastrel playboy warmonger who didn't give a s—t about anyone but himself into a slightly less wastrel-like robotic-suit-wearing superhero who occasionally gave a s—t about someone else and was generally too tired to be a playboy. So, a fundamental change in my worldview as well as an incentive to stop wasting my life. Don't think it didn't frighten me that I had reached this level of maturity, because it sure as h—l did. But in the end those three months put my life on a better path.

            But if I was supposed to have a guardian angel, I wanted to know where the h—l she was then.

            Pepper dropped her gaze to the hands that were entwined on her lap and was quiet for a long moment. "I couldn't find you," she finally began, not looking up. "I could only look sporadically—the investigation was intense, we were all under surveillance. If I had disappeared completely they would have thought I was… involved somehow." I nodded at her reasoning. She took a breath and I wondered if she really needed to breathe at all. "And then after a month… I found you."

            She looked up and met my wide-eyed stare at that. "What?"

            "I found you," she repeated evenly. "In the cave with the forge and all the scrap metal. The guard, the man with no teeth, fell asleep one night and I walked right past him, opened the door, and saw you there." I could only gape at her, slightly light-headed and more than slightly nauseous. "The other man slept by the forge to keep warm, but you slept closer to the wall."

            "Yinsen," I reminded her. A man I could never forget. It was all I could think to say.

            "I walked across the room to get you," Pepper continued, "and I put my hand on your forehead, to make sure you stayed asleep. And then I saw what was in your mind." For once I didn't even feel like cracking a dirty joke. "You were… different. You were determined, you had purpose. You had a plan—to make that armor, and to stop making weapons." She stared downward determinedly again. "I couldn't take you away from that, Mr. Stark. I couldn't take you away from your destiny."

            Silence stretched out between us as I tried to understand what she'd confessed to. Suddenly I was very glad Pepper had saved her big secret until this point, because if I'd had any idea she was _able_ to save me in Afghanistan, I would've sat around whining and waiting for her.

            G-d, I was so mature now it was _scary_.

            "I used to think I was going crazy," I finally said, somewhat surprised I had started talking again. "Sometimes I swore I could smell your shampoo, hear the click-click-click of your heels. Yinsen told me I was hallucinating."

            Pepper shook her head slowly. "I kept an eye on you. Usually at night. Tried to… take care of your injuries."

            Which was really the only way a man could come back from three months of captivity, and primitive heart surgery, looking as good as I had. "You almost did _too_ good a job," I pointed out dryly. "The CIA was _very_ interested in why I wasn't more malnourished."

            "After you escaped, I made sure they knew where to find you," she added.

            "The helicopters _did_ come awfully quickly," I agreed.

            "I'm—very sorry, Mr. Stark," Pepper concluded quietly, despondently.

            I remembered how she had acted when I first came home, After. She cried, and Pepper _never_ cried. She was clingy, always touching me and sitting closer to me than necessary. Not that I minded (except for the crying), though building the Mark II took up the energy I normally would have spent trying to jump her in a vulnerable moment. Rhodey told me once, ominously, that Pepper had been 'very upset' by my disappearance, but I never pressed for details. Part of me wanted to be angry she'd left me there to rot in that cave. But the rest of me knew it was as hard for her to watch as it was for me to go through it, and that if she'd intervened, things would not have turned out for the best.

            "I just—wish I could have seen you walk into that cave with your business suit and stilettos and kick some terrorist a-s," I finally told her, wistfully.

            She looked up then, with a little smile and slightly glittery eyes. "Mr. Stane certainly seemed surprised when I showed up on the rooftop."

            My eyes widened again in astonishment. "You threw down with Obadiah in the Mark III? No s—t! When was _that_?"

            "He had thrown you quite a distance," Pepper reported, "and I thought you might need some time to regroup."

            "Tell me! Tell me what happened!" I demanded eagerly, shaking her hand.

            "Well, I walked out on the roof while he was laughing maniacally—"

            "Granted, he used to do that before," I reminded her.

            "Yes, sir. And I coughed a little to get his attention, and he turned around to look at me. The expression on his face," she added, "was moderately satisfying. Then he made a little speech, which I was able to ironically repeat back to him moments later when I had survived a blast from his missile launcher and crushed some of his weaponry."

            "He shot at you?! That f----r!" I exclaimed with indignation.

            "Well, I'm sure it seemed reasonable at the time," she allowed. "Although it _did_ destroy one of my favorite suits." Certainly worthy of the ultimate punishment in Pepper's mind. "By that point you had revived sufficiently, so I returned to my position by the reactor."

            "Awesome," I decided, with finality. This time the silence between us was comfortable, at least until I remembered something _else_ Pepper had said a long time ago. "You've never had sex with a human!"

            Pepper raised an eyebrow. "I see which of my remarks had the most impression on you."

            " _You_ implied that what you meant was—" Let's just say robots also factored into _that_.

            "I apologize for that conversation, sir," she interrupted, clearly not as sorry as she had been earlier. "I was attempting a new form of social interaction that I thought you would enjoy—"

            "Talking dirty? In a car full of people? You _bet_ I enjoyed it!"

            "—but instead it seemed to make you uncomfortable," she contradicted.

            "Uncomf—oh." This had occurred about a month before the Jericho demo, a month before the walls came tumbling down, a month before After began, and I spent that month immersed in last minute demo details and _not_ following up the more-than-flirtatious banter by my assistant. "Well, it kind of took me by surprise," I admitted. "Maybe you shouldn't have jumped right in with the kinky sex talk. Maybe you should've started with—laughing at my jokes." Pepper gave a flirtatious chuckle that sent shivers down my spine, and not the good kind. "Okay, no, just stop," I judged. "It's unnatural. It doesn't work for you."

            She smiled a little. "Well don't say I didn't _try_."

            "The effort is appreciated," I assured her, adding hopefully, "So are the, um, interactions still open?"

            "Oh, I don't think so," Pepper replied, as I whined my disappointment. "You get injured so often now as it is. I wouldn't want to risk harming you further with my greater strength, stamina, flexibility…" A whimper escaped my throat. Pepper ignored it and started to move. "Well, I should really let you get some sleep, sir—"

            "Pepper, you will not move from this bed!" I ordered. Even if all she was doing right now was sitting on it. I still had hope for the future.

            She smiled a little. "Alright, sir. But you need to go back to sleep."

            "Okay. But don't go anywhere, Pepper."

            "I won't, sir."

* * *


End file.
